I’m Going Split-Personality on Facebook

Even though I think Twitter is mo’ funner, I recognize that Facebook has probably the greater potential to be used for personal networking. My wife thinks Twitter is boring even though she recognizes its potential as a place for professional connections and conversation to happen. Because I’m accustomed to how Twitter works, I tend to use Facebook in a similar way (though with far fewer posts).

Here’s the issue I run into on Facebook. I have a lot of friends and family I’m connected with – people I went to high school or college with, people to whom I’m related, and people with whom I work. They don’t all care about the things I tweet about (and often post about on Facebook). They care about the pictures of my kids doing funny things. So I’m purposely going split-personality so that Facebook will be useful to me as a professional, and fun for me as a dad, husband, Pastor, and average joe.

My personal Facebook profile is the spot I’ll chat about personal things – what’s happening in our lives. And my new Facebook page is where I’ll talk about design, branding, communications, social media, technology, and all kinds of other boring things.

So to invite you to “Like” me on Facebook isn’t an ego trip. Rather it’s an open invitation for anyone who would rather chat about all the “media stuff.” And as I looked into the possibility of setting things up this way, I discovered a couple of fairly interesting things. One is that you can establish a presence on Facebook as a “professional person” which requires a page and which has a different purpose than a personal profile. Two is that when you log into Facebook, you can browse around “as Brandon” (my personal profile) or “as Brandon Cox” (my professional page). So I can comment and interact as either/or.